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Mrs, Behn’s Biography a Fiction 


BY ; 
ERNEST BERNBAUM 


[Reprinted from the Publications of the Modern Languagé Association of 


America, XXVIII, 3.] 


THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 
1913 


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XVI.—MRS. BEHN’S BIOGRAPHY A FICTION 


The personal history of Mrs. Behn, commonly called the 
first Englishwoman to earn her livelihood by authorship, 
has long been regarded as unusually interesting. The 
daughter of a barber named John Johnson, she was bap- 
tized at Wye, Kent, 10 July, 1640.1. She was buried in 
London, 20 April, 1689.7, We find that her career, as 
generally related, falls into three principal episodes. (1) 
With a relative whom in Oroonoko she calls her father, 
and who was appointed lieutenant-governor of Surinam, 
she went to that colony, where she met the royal slave 
who is the hero of her story, and where she remained 
until about 1658. (2) She married a London merchant 
of Dutch extraction, named Behn, but was widowed by 
1666. (3) In the latter part of 1666, while acting as a 
political agent at Antwerp, she gained, through a Dutch 
lover of hers named Vander Albert, early information of 
the famous raid by De Ruyter on the English ships in 
the Thames and Medway; but her timely warning was 
ridiculed by the British government officials, and she 
retired from the secret service to devote herself to litera- 
ture. Momentary doubts whether these data are not in 
some particulars inaccurate have occasionally been ex- 
pressed during the last sixty years; but the suspicions, 


*Note in the handwriting of Lady Winchelsea (which, as it 
alludes to the Life and Memoirs of Mrs. Behn, must have been made 
in or after 1696), and parish register of Wye,—both reported by 
Edmund Gosse in Atheneum, 6 September, 1884. 

2 Westminster Abbey Registers (1876), p. 223, n. 2. 


432 


© 


MRS. BEHN’S BIOGRAPHY A FICTION 433 


never very strong, have always quickly died away. The 
story as outlined above has been substantially accepted 
and retold, not only by the compilers of popular works of 
reference, but by scholars like Walter Raleigh, Richard 
Garnett, W. H. Hudson, H. 8. Canby, and Miss C, E. 
Morgan, as well as by those who have made a special study 
of Mrs. Behn,—namely Edmund Gosse, P. Siegel, and 
EK. A. Baker.? 

All biographers who have recounted the three above- 
stated episodes drew their information directly or indi- 
rectly from two sources,—(1) the autobiographical state- 
ments in Mrs. Behn’s Oroonoko and The Fair Jilt (1688), 
and (2) The Life and Memoirs of Mrs. Behn (1696).® 
The absolute untrustworthiness of the first of these sources 


+H. J. Rose, New General Biographical Dictionary, Iv (1848), 


p. 10.—Notes and Queries, 3rd Ser., m1 (1863), p. 368; 6th Ser., x 


(1884), p. 244; 8th Ser., 1 (1892), p. 145.—Mrs> M. A. E. Green, 
Preface to Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1666-1667, (1864), 
p- xxviii—J. L. Chester, Westminster Abbey Registers (1876), 
p- 223, n. 2.—P. Siegel, in Anglia, xxv. (1902), pp. 87 and 90. 

2 Julia Kavanagh, English Women of Letters (1862), pp. 4-13.— 
Edmund Gosse, in Dictionary of National Biography, tv (1885), pp. 
129-131; and in second edition, 1 (1908), pp. 130 ff—Walter Raleigh, 
The English Novel, 5th ed. (1906), pp. 107-109.—Richard Garnett, 
The Age of Dryden, (1895), pp. 146-147.—W. H. Hudson, Jdle Hours 
in a Library (1897), pp. 155-157.—André Lichtenberger, Le Social- 
isme Utopique (1898), pp. 8-12.—P. Siegel, Aphra Behn’s Gedichte 
und Prosawerke, Anglia, xxv (1902), pp. 86 ff. (praised by Miss 
Morgan (p. 75) for its “careful and adequate treatment ”).— 
Chambers’s Encyclopedia, 11 (1902), pp. 68.—E. A. Baker, Intro- 
duction to The Novels of Mrs. Aphra Behn (1905).—H. S. Canby, 
The Short Story in English (1909), pp. 163-167.—Encyclopedia 
Britannica, 11th ed., 111 (1910), p. 657.—Charlotte E. Morgan, The 


‘Rise of the Novel of Manners (1911), pp. 75 ff.—The Cambridge His- 


tory of English Literature, vir (1912), pp. 159-161. 
*Edward Arber, The Term Catalogues, 11 hie pp. (230 and 
578.—Cf. Dict. Nat. Biog., 1% (1908), p. 131. 


434 ERNEST BERNBAUM 


has recently been revealed, however, by the discovery that 
Mrs. Behn in Oroonoko deliberately and circumstantially 
lied. No relation of hers was appointed lieutenant-general 
of Surinam; her description of the colony was stolen from 
George Warren’s Impartial Description of Surinam; and 
the events in which she says she participated were imag- 
inary.* 

On turning to The Fair Jilt, one finds matter for sus- 
picion. Mrs. Behn tells us that the events therein related 
aroused great public excitement in Antwerp about 1666, 
and that she is giving us the true name of the hero; but 
history knows no such personage as her “ Prince Tarquin, 
of the race of the last kings of Rome,” who entered into 
a notorious marriage, became involved in crime, and made 
a sensational escape from public execution in full view 
of thousands of people. This short melodramatic romance 
has not even such touches of second-hand realism as appear 
in Oroonoko, yet it is as earnestly vouched for by Mrs. 
Behn,” that observant eye-witness, who kept “ journal 
observations.” * It is in the midst of this fanciful story 
that we come upon its only autbiographic remark,—that 
Mrs. Behn was sent to Antwerp by King Charles in 1665 
or 1666. Of course we may not deny offhand the truth 
of that assertion; but in view of Mrs. Behn’s frequent 


*Ernest Bernbaum, Mrs. Behn’s Oroonoko, in the George Lyman 
Kittredge Anniversary Papers (1913), pp. 419-433. 

* On the conventional character of authors’ declarations of veracity, 
see A. J. Tieje A Peculiar Phase of the Theory of Realism in Pre- 
Richardsonian Fiction, in Publ. Mod. Lang. Ass. of Am., XXVIII 
(1913), pp. 213 ff. Their presence is, however, no proof of fiction; 
for of course veracious historians may and do make similar declara- 
tions. 

’The Fair Jilt, in Mrs. Behn’s Plays, Histories and Novels, ed. 
John Pearson (1871), v, pp. 205, 2438, 263. 


MRS. BEHN’S BIOGRAPHY A FICTION 435 


falsehoods in Oroonoko, we cannot accept it on her uncor- 
roborated word. Does there exist any reliable evidence 
to support it ? 

Seven years after Mrs. Behn’s death, Charles Gildon 
issued her play, The Younger Brother, and prefixed to it 
An Account of the Life of the Incomparable Mrs. Behn. 
In this two and a ha#¥ page document, her first biography, 
is the following passage: 


She married Mr. Behn, an eminent merchant, and in the time 
of the Dutch war grew to such an esteem for wit, nay and judgment 
too, and which is more uncommon in the fair sex—secrecy and 
management of public affairs,—that she was employed by King 
Charles the Second in several negotiations in Flanders which re- 
quired industry and caution, and which she quitted with all the 
applause success could gain a beautiful woman in the heart of a 
king that had always a peculiar value for that sex. How grateful 
he was, or whether her service made his satisfaction extend to a 
reward, I have forgot. 


Though this statement is much more wordy than Mrs. 
Behn’s in The Fair Jilt,* it is only a little less vague. In 
a very specific and detailed form, however, the story re- 
appears the same year (1696), again under the auspices 
of Gildon, in the second of the two sources of biographic 
information,—the Life and Memoirs, ‘‘ written by one 
of the fair sex.” ? Here for the first time we are told 


f 

*P, 243. She tells us that for six ytars after the last year of 
King Charles’s banishment (1659-1660), Prince Tarquin travelled 
“up and down the world, and then arrived at Antwerp, about the 
time of my being sent there by King Charles.” 

2The Histories and Novels of Mrs. Behn ... And Love Letters 
never before printed: together with the Life of Mrs. Behn, written 
by one of the Fair Sex (1696). Recorded in the Term Catalogues, 11, 
578. This is apparently the first edition. A “fifth” is in the 
British Museum, and like the “eighth” (reprinted in 1871 by John 
Pearson, and referred to in this paper), it contains a dedication 
signed “Charles Gildon.” 


436 ERNEST BERNBAUM 


of the Dutch lover Vander Albert apprising Mrs. Behn 
of the coming attack on the Thames fleet; and here we 
find in general such circumstantiality of narration as 
permits investigation of its truth. Indeed, since Mrs. 
Behn’s autobiographic remarks are untrustworthy, the 
problem of her true biography reduces itself to the question 
whether the Life and Memoirs is sa 

Fifty-five of its seventy three pageS contain comic and 
sentimental incidents, mostly related in letters. These are 
mere appendages to the principal episodes of Mrs. Behn’s 
career, and their credibility depends upon that of the latter. 
Our hopes of gaining true information on the principal 
points, are raised by the engaging assurance of the “ fair ” 
author: ‘‘ I knew her | Mrs. Behn] intimately well.” But 
it soon strikes us as singular that, though she elaborates 
with considerable fullness on those episodes which had 
already been briefly mentioned by Mrs. Behn herself or 
by Gildon, she gives no entirely new facts of importance. 
There remain periods in Mrs. Behn’s life which are ap- 
parently as unknown to this bosom friend as they are to us. 
Again, though she avers that Mrs. Behn had no secrets 
from her, she was not advised of the fictitious character 
of Mrs. Behn’s pretended journey to Surinam, but repeats 
with almost verbal fidelity what was fabled about that 
‘adventure in Oroonoko. Even if we assume that like the 
rest of the world she was imposed upon by a plausible 
story, it is rather strange that she, a woman, should so 
decidedly underestimate Aphara’s* age. She insists that 


+“ Aphara” sems to me the proper spelling. It appears thus 
in Mrs. Behn’s letters in the State Papers, in her petitions to the 
king, and on her gravestone. The baptismal register has “ Ayfara.” 
The title-pages of her works during her lifetime usually have “ Mrs. 
A. Behn.“ 


MRS. BEHN'S BIOGRAPHY A FICTION 437 


Aphara could not have been in love with Oroonoko because 
she was hardly more than a child at the time. As a 
matter of fact, the historical allusions in Oroonoko are to 
the years 1665 and 1666, when Aphara was between 25 
and 26.4 Evidently this biographer is not only credulous 
but inaccurate. 

Another and more serious chronological discrepancy, cre- 
ated by Mrs. Behn’s falsehoods, went unperceived by the 
author of the Life and Memoirs, and has been ignored to 
our own day. Had Aphara really participated in the events 
recorded in Oroonoko, she must have been in Surinam at 
least as late as December, 1665, and probably a few months 
later. Yetin The Fair Jilt she intimates that she arrived 
in Antwerp about 1665 or 1666, and the author of the 
Infe and Memoirs places the Vander Albert negotiations 
“ the latter end of the year 1666.” 2 Thus in the interval 
between December, 1665, and “ the latter end of 1666,” 
Aphara is supposed to have returned from Surinam to 
London, married Mr. Behn, become a widow, and com- 
menced her secret service! To-day we know that she never 
was in Surinam; but this does not alter the fact that a 
biographer who believed that she had been there, and who 
was not made suspicious by the remarkably improbable 
celerity of events which that would involve, had evidently 
no regard for chronology and can hardly be considered a 
sufficiently careful historian. 

Though the Life and Memovrs credulously accepts the 
Surinam episode, and blunders in matters of chronology, 
it may nevertheless furnish fairly reliable information 
about Mrs. Behn’s secret service in Antwerp. Vivid and 


1 Life and Memoirs, pp. 2-4.—Kittredge Anniversary Papers, p. 422. 
*The Fair Jilt, p. 243.—Life and Memoirs, p. 8. 


438 ERNEST BERNBAUM 


specific as the account of this adventure is, however, it will 
not bear thorough scrutiny. It falls into two parts,—Mrs. 
Behn’s discovery of the Dutch project, and her return to 
England. ‘“ Astrea,” we are told, “‘ proceeded in her jour- 
ney to Ostend and Dunkirk, where, with Sir Bernard 
Gascoigne and others, she took shipping to England.” ? 
Gascoigne, a soldier, diplomat, and virtuoso, was a person 
of sufficient consequence to have the fact of his arrival 
communicated to the office of the Secretary of State. Con- 
sequently we know that he reached Dover, 1 May (O.S8.), 
1667.2 It is a well established fact, to which I shall 
revert below, that the Dutch did not plan their sudden 
attack until the peace negotiations at Breda were develop- 
ing to their dissatisfaction. As those negotiations did 
not even begin until May,? it is obvious that if Mrs. Behn 
advised her government of the coming danger, she could 
not have returned home at the same time as Sir Bernard 
Gascoigne. If, on the other hand, she did return with 
him, she could not have sent the warning. ‘The two parts 
of the episode are quite incompatible. 

Taken by itself, the Gascoigne incident is untrustworthy. 
We are asked to believe that through one of Sir Bernard’s 
marvelous telescopes the travelers saw floating upon the 
Channel “a four-square floor of various colored marble, 
from which ascended rows of fluted and twisted pillars, 
embossed round with climbing vines and flowers and way- 
ing streamers that received an easy motion from the air; 
upon the pillars a hundred little cupids clambered with 


*The Fair Jilt, p. 38. 

2 State Papers, 1667, p. 67. 

* State Papers, 1667, p. 108.—Gilby reports to Williamson the 
arrival of a letter from Amsterdam, dated May 10720, stating that 
the treaty at Breda is beginning. 


MRS. BEHN’S BIOGRAPHY A FICTION 439 
fluttering wings.” “I have often,” says the biographer, 
“heard her [Mrs. Behn] assert that the whole company 
saw it.” This absurd phantom, after approaching the ship 
very closely, was followed by “so violent a storm that, 
having driven the ship upon the coasts, she split in sight 
of land; but the people by the help of the inhabitants and 
boats from the shore were all saved, and our Astrea arrived 
safe, though tired, to London.” ! It happens that the fleet 
with which Sir Bernard sailed did meet with a storm, the 
violence of which was doubtless exaggerated in the news- 
reports of the time; but it is a matter of record that the 
ship he was in was not wrecked.? In short, the account 
of Mrs. Behn’s homeward journey is incredible. 

We have reached a point where all that we can consider 
possibly authentic in the Life and Memoirs is Mrs. Behn’s 
discovery of the Dutch project, which according to her 
biographer took place in the following way. After Charles 
IT had opened peace negotiations, and carelessly weakened 
his fleet, Cornelius de Witt and De Ruyter proposed that 
the Dutch raid the English men-of-war in the Thames. 
Some treacherous English ministers assured the Dutch 
that they would meet with no opposition. Having dis- 
covered these state secrets, Vander Albert, the lover of 
Mrs. Behn, journeyed “ the latter end of 1666” from 
Utrecht to Antwerp and revealed them to her. She at 
once notified one of the English ministers, but he con- 
temned her information, and allowed her letter to be 
derisively bandied about. Presently a friend apprised her 
of the ridicule her efforts had met with, and suggested she 
employ her pen on her amorous adventures rather than on 


* Life and Memoirs, pp. 39-40. 
: * State Papers, 1667, pp. 76 and 72. 


* tas 
">. 
—- 


440 ERNEST BERNBAUM 


unappreciated political intelligence. Soon thereafter, when 
the Dutch descended upon the Thames and Medway, Mrs. 
Behn had the satisfaction of seeing her warning come 
true.! 

In this interesting story, some mistakes are at once 
apparent. It was not Cornelius de Witt, but his brfother 
John, the famous Grand Pensionary of Holland, who pro- 
posed the expedition.” The statement that ‘‘ some minis- 
ters about the King” assured the Dutch that there would 
be no opposition, cannot be substantiated. But these are 
details which might be rejected without impairing the 
veracity of the account as a whole. 

We shall recognize its general character only if we look 
carefully at the true history of Holland and England just 
before the descent on the Medway. The disastrous reso- 
lution to lower the efficiency of the English fleet was not 
taken until February, 1667.2 Then and during the fol- 
lowing months the English knew perfectly well that the 
Dutch fleet might attack the coast anywhere at any mo- 
ment; yet, though from time to time they strengthened 
their fortifications in many parts of the country,* they 
steadily pursuegthe policy of withdrawing men-of-war 
from commission. They expected the negotiations begun 
at Breda in the middle of May to bring peace speedily. 
After the envoys had been treating for some time, the 
Dutch found the English demands too truculent and ex- 


* Life and Memoirs, pp. 8-10. 

2G. A. Lefévre Pontalis, Jean de Witt, 1 (1884), p. 400—P. J. 
Blok, Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Volk, v (1902), p. 223. 

3J. R. Tanner, The Administration of the Navy from the Restora- 


tion to the Revolution, English Historical Review, x1r (1897), p. 39. 


* Among the many orders issued is one for the protection of the 
ships in the Medway, 25 March. State Papers, 1666-1667, pp. 586 
and XXxX1. 


MRS. BEHN’S BIOGRAPHY A FICTION 441 


cessive to be tolerable. Not until then did John de Witt 
determine to bring matters to a head by a quick and sur- 
prising attack.? 

His ability to keep such an expedition secret had been 
remarkably well proved in the seizure of the British Afri- 
can possessions the year before;* and in the case that 
concerns us here he took equally careful precautions. Not 
even the French ambassador D’Estrades, usually fully in- 
formed, was allowed to learn of this project. De Witt 
did not wish the States General themselves to know of the 
plan, but laid it before .a small naval committee, which 
had not until 12 May been empowered to act on such 
matters, and which probably was not asked to authorize 
the expedition until the eve of its departure 14 June.* 
That the secret of its destination was betrayed to the 
English is antecedently improbable. 

The march of events demonstrates in many ways the 
English ignorance of De Witt’s plan. The State Papers 
of the time will be searched in vain for any previous 
warning of the attack on the Thames and Medway. As 
late as the first week in June, the policy of weakening 
the navy was still being pursued, not only at Portsmouth 
and Dover but at Chatham,’—the very region the Dutch 
were to fall upon. Of course England quickly knew that 
the Dutch fleet had sailed; ® and if the authorities had 


1Lefévre Pontalis, De Witt, 1, p. 400.—Blok, Nederlandsche Volk, 
Vv, p. 223.—As a possibility, an attack upon the Thames had long 
been in De Witt’s mind; but the question here is when he definitely 
determined upon this particular expedition. 

4Lefévre Pontalis, 1, pp. 329-330. 

3 Blok, v, p. 223. 

*Lefévre Pontalis, 1, p. 401.—Blok, v, p. 223. 

5 State Papers, 1667, 29 May (O. 8.), pp. 1380-131. 

* State Papers, 1667, 19 May, 23 May; pp. 108 and 116. 


449 ERNEST BERNBAUM 


ever been informed by a spy that the enemy intended to 
attack the Thames squadron, however they might pre- 
viously have derided the warning, they surely would now 
have acted in accordance with a recognition of its credi- 
bility. But nothing is clearer from the reports and orders 
they issued in June, 1667, than that they had no intimation 
of just where the blow was to be expected. The Secretary 
of State, Lord Arlington, was directing that vigilance be 
exercised throughout the southern and eastern maritime 
counties, but was evidently unable to give any suggestion 
as to what part of the extensive coastline was in especial 
danger.’ Had the government known what to expect it 
would have massed its forces on the banks of the Thames 
and Medway, instead of which we find them sent not only 
thither but also to Harwich, Portsmouth, the Isle of Wight, 
Weymouth, and Portland. As late as 18 June, Naval 
Commissioner Coventry declares it ‘as yet uncertain what 
is the enemy’s design.” * It was the progress of the Dutch 
fleet up the Thames, and not any previous intelligence, that 
revealed the bold purpose, one which never could have 
been so brilliantly achieved if the defenders had had even 
one week’s warning of its precise character. 

Secrecy and speed on the part of the Dutch, bewildered 
ignorance on the part of the English,—these are the his- 
toric circumstances of the affair. A slowly maturing plan, 
betrayed and communicated to the English a considerable 
time before its execution,—conditions directly contrary to 
the real ones,—are assumed in the story first “ divulged,” 
thirty years after the event, by Mrs. Behn’s biographer. 


* Ibid., 29 May, pp. 130 and xii-xiii. 
2 [bid., p. Xvi. 
*Ibid., 8 June (O. S.), p. 158. 


» 


MRS. BEHN 'S BIOGRAPILY A FICTION 443 


It is manifestly a tissue of inaccuracies, improbabilities, 
and falsehoods. 


LT 


Modern writers on Mrs. Behn have placed such confi- 
dence in the Life and Memovrs that they have not troubled 
to look elsewhere for possible records of her political ser- 
vice. Yet in the Calendar of State Papers of Charles II 
there have been readily accessible during the last fifty 
years seventeen genuine letters written by or to Mrs. Behn. 
Though few in number, they (unlike the Izfe and 
Memovrs) authentically prove that she was indeed a poli- 
tical agent at Antwerp, and they give us a fair view of 
her real activities there.1 

Jo understand these we must revert to a different aspect 
of the Dutch war than that presented in the Life and 
femoirs, and to a period nearly a year earlier than the 
descent on the Medway. It was in August, 1666, that 
Mrs. Behn was sent to Antwerp.? Her special duty there 
was not to discover and report the naval news of Holland 
(though in the course of her correspondence she not infre- 
quently did so), but to learn what she could about those 
Englishmen in Holland who, like the famous Algernon 
Sydney, displeased with the government of Charles II, 
were plotting against it, holding treasonable correspondence 


* State Papers, 1666-1667, pp. 44, 72, 82, 97, 118, 125, 135, 142, 
145, 146, 156, 157, 236, 371.—Of these seventeen letters, eleven are 
written by Mrs. Behn, the others by her correspondent, William 
Scott. 

In her first letter (16 August), she says she sailed with Sir 
Anthony Desmarces. He was at Margate 25 July and at Bruges 7 
August. These dates are presumably O. S.—State Papers, 1665-1666, 
p. 576; JIbid., 1666-1667, pp. 17 and 44. 


444 ERNEST BERNBAUM 


with disloyal subjects in England, and even actively aid- 
ing the Dutch enemies of their native country. At Rotter- 
dam one of these exiled adventurers, Colonel Bamfield, 
commanded an English regiment in the Dutch service; 
and it was with an officer of this regiment, William Scott, 
that Mrs. Behn particularly desired to establish communi- 
cation. William Scott’s father, Thomas, one of the regi- 
cides, had been executed at the Restoration, and in the 
spring of 1666 William himself had been officially com- 
manded to return to England; but he dared not face a 
government evidently ill pleased with his conduct. It 
seems, however, that he was now prepared to re-establish 
his loyalty by acting as a spy among the English in 
Holland, provided he should receive the reward of a pardon 
as well as money.” 

In her first letter to the London authorities, Mrs. Behn 
reports that she has sueceeded in persuading Scott to begin 
his service,—a service so hazardous that in describing her 
meeting with Scott, she mentions “taking a coach and going 
a day’s journey with him for an opportunity of speaking to 
him.” ‘‘ Though at first shy,” she adds, “ he became by 
arguments extremely willing to undertake the service.” * 
But some two weeks later, when he came to Antwerp again, 
he insisted that he must have his official pardon if he was 
to continue informer; and Mrs. Behn wrote to Tom Kille- 
~ grew, the king’s favorite, begging him to obtain it.* There- 


1 State Papers, 1665-1666, p. 318.—A curious list of duties to be 
performed by Dutch spies in England (Ibid., 1666-1667, p. 427) 
includes “to communicate with Scott’s brother-in-law and corres- 
pondent.” 

2Tbid., 1666-1667, p. 82. 

°Tbid., p. 44. 

‘Tbid., p. 82. It may be recalled that Mrs. Behn’s The Rover 
is based on Killegrew’s Thomaso the Wanderer. 


MRS. BEHN’S BIOGRAPHY A FICTION 445 


after, for about four weeks, though the pardon was exas- 
peratingly delayed, Scott, as “‘ Celadon,” wrote in cypher 
from Rotterdam to “‘ Astrea” 1 at Antwerp; and she for- 
warded his news to London. 

The news was of all sorts some of it concerning the 
Dutch navy. But the only approach to any warning of 
an attack by the Dutch is found in the following remark 
by Scott: ‘“‘ They pretend no design to land in England, 
but are really eager after such a thing if they can gain the 
help of the fanatics ” [1. e., the disloyal dissenters].2 Most 
of the allusions to the Dutch fleet are in the nature of 
suggestions that if the English will attack it now they 
will be successful. Moreover, the characteristic and ap- 
parently the most appreciated portion of the correspond- 
ence,—bearing information which Scott had exceptional 
opportunities of obtaining,—communicates the activities 
of the English malcontents at Rotterdam, and the schemes 
of their London sympathizers, at least’ one of whom owed 
his detection and imprisonment to this spy system.* 

Though the system for some time worked smoothly 
enough, Mrs. Behn was not without anxieties. She was 
much annoyed by the inquisitiveness and hostility of a 
rival English political agent in Antwerp, “ an unsufferable, 
scandalous, lying, prating fellow,” who, “ not being able 
to find out her business, abuses and threatens to kill Scott, 
and writes to everybody in Holland that Scott visits her.” 
She urges that “his tongue should be clipped.” ° But this 


4Thus the exigencies of political service, and not literary affec- 
tation, gave rise to this well known name of Mrs. Behn. 


2 State Papers, 1666-1667, p. 146. This was written in September, 
1666. 


3 Tbid., pp. 118, 125, 135, 156. 
*Tbid., pp. 82, 118, 135, 146. 
5 Ibid., pp. 145 and 136. Cf. pp. xxvii-xxvili and 82. 


446 ERNEST BERNBAUM 


difficulty was almost comic in comparison wtih the dis- 
tressing failure of the government to provide her and 
Scott with sufficient funds. The forty pounds she brought 
with her were soon expended, and she needed money to 
pay for her living expenses, Scott’s services, and the 
messengers between them. On one occasion she could pay 
the latter only by pawning her ring. She apologetically 
explained to Killegrew why she sent a mere servant for 
money; “‘ her mother was not fit to come for it, and Sir 
Thomas is seldom in town.” + Nearly all her letters from 
Antwerp are begging ones; and in London, almost two 
years later, she was still petitioning the king for her dues, 
and writing to Killegrew as follows: | 


I must go to prison tomorrow if I have not the money tonight; 
they [her creditors] say I am dallied with, and will not allow a 
few days more. I would break through all, get to the King, and 
never rise till he had paid me the money, but am too sick and 
weak. I will send my mother to the king with a petition, and not 
perish in a prison, whence he [a creditor with a claim of £150] 
swears I shall not stir till I have paid the uttermost farthing. 
If I have not the money tonight, you must send me something to 
keep me in prison, for I will not starve. 


Even this pathetic appeal seems to have been futile, for a 
subsequent petition, the last record of this episode, is 
written from prison.? The niggardly policy that wrecked 
so many efforts, small and great, to serve Charles II, was 
what starved the promising enterprise of Mrs. Behn at 
Antwerp. In September and October 1666, Scott sent 
information regularly; then the reports cease; and by 
November it transpires that he is imprisoned,—apparently 


*Tbid., pp. 44, 72, 135. 
* State Papers, 1668-1669, p. 127.—Cf. Notes and Queries, 2nd 
Ser., vit (1859), pp. 265-266. 


MRS. BEHN’S BIOGRAPHY A FICTION 447 


not as a spy but as a poor debtor. By January, 1667, 
Mrs. Behn, almost ‘wild with her hard treatment,” had 
abandoned her service and set out for home.” 


III 


Having ascertained these facts, we are all the more 
certain of the untrustworthy character of the life and 
Memoirs.* It says that her negotiations were with one 
Vander Albert, a Dutch traitor from Utrecht, but we have 
found that they were with an English spy from Rotterdam. 
It tells with great circumstantiality that Vander Albert 
supphed her with information because he was in love 
with her. No one who knows Mrs. Behn and the manners 
of her age will suppose that, if such had been the nature 
of her power over her informant, she would have hesi- 
tated to state the fact frankly; but, as we have seen, what 
Scott expected to gain through her was money and his 
pardon. It is also clear from her first to her last letter, 


* State Papers, 1666-1667, p. 236.—Had spying been the ground of 
his arrest, we should hardly learn that, as Mrs. Behn writes in 
December (p. 371), “he will have his liberty in a few days.” 

*Mrs. M. A. E. Green, in the preface to the State Papers, 1666- 
1667, p. xxviii, says Mrs. Behn returned in December; but her -last 
letter is dated 26 December,—O. 8S. ay 

* We likewise ascertain that Mrs. Behn’s only autobiographic as- 
sertion in The Fair Jilt,—that she was sent to Antwerp in 1665 
or 1666,—is not a falsehood. But on the same grounds the story 
itself proves fictitious: for she was there only five months, and the 
adventures of Tarquin, which she says occurred during her stay, 
can hardly have covered a period of less than one year, his im- 
prisonment alone lasting over six months (p. 275). The length of 
her stay in Antwerp assumed in the Life and Memoirs is also 
impossibly long. 


448 ERNEST BERNBAUM 


that she had no other informant than Scott, whose arrest 
made her no longer serviceable to the government. Finally, 
the date of her actual departure from Antwerp makes it 
quite impossible for her to have gained knowledge of the 
design against the Thames ships. 

The author of the Infe and Memoirs, basing its fictions 
on her autobiographic remarks in Oroonoko and T he Fair 
Jilt, and not knowing the true facts, felt obliged to invent, 
regarding her stay in Flanders, as interesting incidents as 
conceivable. At that time (1696), thirty years after the 
Dutch war, its best remembered event was the sensational 
and dramatic attack on the Thames; and to associate Mrs. 
Behn’s political services therewith was both natural and 
expedient. To eke out the slender materials, amorous 
letters and episodes were fabricated. If we had found 
them in a work whose testable statements proved true, 
we might hesitate to declare them forged; but when we 
see them appear in a work of precisely the contrary char- 
acter their pronounced resemblance to the usual French 
and English love letters and stories of the time 1 becomes 
of decided significance, and leads us to recognize them too 
as fictitious. 

It was Charles Gildon who wrote the Account of Mrs. 
Behn, and he who issued the volume of her stories in which 
the Life and Memoirs “ by one of the fair sex’ appears. 
Though he affects intimate acquaintance with Mrs. Behn, 
he can hardly have known her at all until near the end of 
her life, for he did not come to London until he was 
twenty-one,” in 1686, and she died 16 April, 1689. His 


*Cf. C. E. Morgan, The Rise of the Novel of Manners (1911), pp. 
76-77. 

? Lives and Characters of the English Dramatic Poets, .. . first 
begun by Mr. Langbain, improved ... by a careful hand [Charles 
Gildon] (1698), p. 174. 


“Tiel iad 


MRS. BEHN S BIOGRAPHY A FICTION 449 


associations and activities before 1696 were not the most 
respectable. His first book was The History of the 
Athenian Society (1691), “ by a gentlemen who got secret 
intelligence of their whole proceedings.” He wrote it for 
that wily rogue, John Dunton, who was quite capable of 
teaching a pliant youth all the tricks of Grub Street.* 
A thoroughly dishonest book, it makes Dunton’s own jour- 
nalistic enterprise, The Athenian Gazette, appear the 
public-spirited labors of a learned society. It ascribes to 
this society some imaginary members, professes to get its 
“secret intelligence ” (really obtained from Dunton) from 
a mysterious ‘C. B.” among them, and is furnished with 
a dedication signed “ R. L.”’ but apparently written either 
by Dunton or by Gildon himself.2 In the same year 
(1691), Gildon wrote, likewise for Dunton, The Post Boy 
Robbed of his Mail, five hundred letters supposed to be 
sent to ‘‘ persons of several qualities,’—a kind of fictitious 
composition which he found successful, for a second volume 
was issued in 1693.° He furthered the sale of another 
series of letters, ‘* by several gentlemen and ladies,”—some 
of them love letters, and all of them doubtless composed 
by himself,—by conspicuously printing on the title-page 
the names of eminent authors to whom they were nominally 
addressed.* In his Miscellany Poems (1692) and Chorus 
Poetarum (1694), he ascribed to poets like Spenser and 


*Cf. C. N. Greenough, John Dunton’s Letters from New England, 
Publications of tht Colonial Society of Massachusetts, x1v (1912), 
pp. 213-257. 

*Cf. H. R. Steeves, The Athenian Virtuosi and the Athenian 
Society, Modern Language Review, vir (1912), pp. 358-371. 

*Term Catalogues, 11, p. 466. 

* Miscellaneous Letters and Essays ... directed to John Dryden, 
Esq.,... Mr. Dennis, Mr. Congreve, ete. (1694). 


450 ERNEST BERNBAUM 


Milton verses which they certainly did not write.’ He 
attached himself to the sensational Charles Blount, and, 
whether officially appointed or not, acted for that half- 
respectable, half-notorious radical as a sort of literary 
executor.? 

When in 1696 Southerne’s Oroonoko gained its great 
success, Gildon seized the opportunity to issue works by 
Mrs. Behn; * and, in view of his former literary irregu- 
larities at which we have glanced, we are not surprised to 
find that the biographical accounts prefixed to them prove 
to be untrustworthy. It is a suspicious circumstance that 
after Gildon had remarked in the Account ‘ To draw her 
to the life, one must write like her that is, with all the 
softness of her sex and all the fire of ours,” he should 
straightway have found “‘ one of the fair sex” to contribute 
the Lxfe and Memorrs to his edition of Mrs. Behn’s stories. 
If he actually was so fortunate as to discover “one of the 
fair sex’? who knew Mrs. Behn as familiarly as she al- 
leges, he must have taught her his own trtcky manner of 
authorship, and she must have rejected all the true facts 
she knew in favor of the false ones she wrote. The 
simpler conjecture is, of course, that Gildon wrote the 
Infe and Memoirs himself. 

In testing the reliability of Gildon and the Life and 
Memoirs I have necessarily confined myself to those par- 
ticulars to which a test of authenticity can be safely 


1 Miscellany Poems, p. 29.—Chorus Poetarum, p. 172. 

2Prefaces to Charles Blount’s Oracles of Reason (1693) and 
Miscellaneous Works (1695). 

5 Southerne’s play is alluded to in Gildon’s Account.—Was Gildon 
the unidentified “G. J., her friend” who in 1690 issued Mrs. Behn’s 
The Widow Ranter and prefixed to it a prologue identical with 
Dryden’s to Shadwell’s A Trwe Widow? 


MRS. BEHN’S BIOGRAPHY A FICTION 451 


applied. Since in such cases fabrication invariably ap- 
pears, it follows that no reliance may be placed in those 
where verification is impossible. For example, we cannot 
accept Gildon’s assertion that Mrs. Behn was “‘able to 
write inthe midst of company, and yet have her share 
of the conversation, which I saw her do in writing 
Oroonoko and other parts of the following volume.” * We 
must preserve the same sceptical attitude on being told 
that Mrs. Behn, after returning from Surinam, “ gave 
King Charles II so pleasant and rational an account of 
his affairs there, and particularly of the misfortunes of 
Oroonoko, that he desired her to deliver them publicly to 
the world.” 2 Of course it is unlikely that she would 
have ventured to recount to the king her imaginary voyage 
to his colony (which, as a matter of fact, is an unflattering 
rather than a “ pleasant ” account); and it is almost cer- 
tain that if he had asked her to publish the story she 
would have eagerly done so at once, and dedicated it to 
him.*? But wholly apart from such considerations, and 
sufficient in itself, is the fact that this incident is told by 
that thoroughly discreditable witness, the author of the Infe 
and Memovrs. In the absence of confirmatory evidence, 
such interesting glimpses of Mrs. Behn’s life and character, 
repeated in most modern biographies, can unfortunately no 
longer be believed true. 

Indeed, what we can at present be truly said to know 


*+Gildon, Epistle Dedicatory to Mrs. Behn’s Histories and Novels, 
Works (1871), v, p. xi. Cf. the last page of Gildon’s Account. 

2 Life and Memoirs pp. 4-5. Is this a fanciful development of 
Southerne’s statement (Epistle Dedicatory to Oroonoko, 1696): “I 
remember what I have heard from a friend of hers, that she always 
told his [Oroonoko’s] story more feelingly that she writ it’? 

3Cf. P. Siegel, Anglia, xxv, p. 98. 


LISRARY 


UNIVERSITY OF (LLINGIS 


452 ERNEST BERNBAUM 


concerning Mrs. Behn’s career is very little. The names, 
of her parents, their humble station, the date and place . 
of her baptism,—these are all the data we have of the 
first twenty-six years of her life. We do not even surely 
know that she was married to a Mr. Behn.’ The only 
episode of which considerable details are preserved is that 
which I have outlined above, 


her six months’ secret ser- 
vice in Antwerp in 1666, followed by her imprisonment for 
debt in 1668. In 1671 she began to write for the stage; 
but even thereafter such meagre contemporary notices as 
we find of her are critical rather than biographical. The 
proportionally large amount by which we must reduce our 
supposed knowledge may perhaps be best summed up in 
saying that everything except the opening sentences in the 
long first paragraph? of her life in the Dictionary of 
National Biography should be struck out as unauthentiec. 

The apparent loss is, however counterbalanced by not 
unwelcome gains. We shall henceforth entertain fewer 
misconceptions about the effect of Mrs. Behn’s personal 
experiences on her art. Had it been previously known 
that the Antwerp love letters in the Life and Memoirs are 
fictitious, Professor Siegel would not have attributed the 
frequent presence in Mrs. Behn’s works of old stingy lovers 
to her affair with the amorous Van Bruin. Nor would 
Mr. EK. A. Baker have said: “‘ She drew upon her Dutch 
experiences in describing the boorish Haunce von Ezel.” * 
The influence worked in just the opposite direction: the 


* Cf. the marriage registers published by the Harleian Society, and 
J. L. Chester’s sceptical comment in Westminster Abbey Registers, 
p. 223, n. 

*The other paragraphs are almost wholly critical and_biblio- 
graphic. 

*P. Siegel, Anglia, xxv, p. 93.—E. A. Baker, Introduction to The 
Novels of Mrs. Aphra Behn, p. xii. ; 


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MRS. BEHN’S BIOGRAPHY A FICTION 453 


lovers in the Life and Memoirs resemble those which her 
biographers had observed in her works. As for Mrs. Behn 
herself, we see how far short she fell of being a genuine 
‘realist’? when she could neglect her own decidedly in- 
teresting adventures in Flanders to write instead of the 
heroic Prince Tarquin. 

A more important gain than this correction of the pre- 
vailing estimates of Mrs. Behn’s works, is that which 
accrues to the history of the novel in the second half of 
the seventeenth century. The more worthless the Life and 
Memoirs as a biographical document, the greater its value 
for the history of fiction. In The Counterfeit Lady 
(1673), as I have shown elsewhere,’ we have already the 
nucleus of a group of works which profess to be biographic 
but are really fictitious, and which anticipate the method 
of Defoe. To this group, small but highly important in its 
bearing on the origin of the modern novel, may now be 
added the Life and Memoirs of Mrs. Behn. The proba- 
bilities are that future research will reveal a whole school 
of such fiction masquerading as fact. 


Ernest BERNBAUM. 


*Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 
xxXvi (1911), p. xxviii. The full results of the study there sum- 
marized I expect to publish shortly. 


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